The Olympics, NBC, America Television and why Peruvians Have It Worse than Americans
The Olympics occur every four years — every two if you consider the Winter Olympics too — and every time they happen, something headline-worthy has to happen. Be it an accidental death before the games open, lack of snow… too rainy a season, Olympic records broken, doping scandals, to even more somber things involving politics and attacks.
In this day and age, we live in a time when we tweet or Facebook update whenever we take a dump, and thus social media has become the way to follow the games as TV networks — I’m looking at you, NBC — still delays the broadcast to the games… because prime-time is better than live television… apparently? Oh, yeah. I’ve seen the comments of angry American fans, and followed the case of the reporter who got suspended from Twitter [1][2] for complaining about it.
But trust me, my American pals, NBC is treating you alright compared to us Peruvians.
Everything started back in 2010, when America Television decided to bid for the broadcast of the Olympics, announcing that they’d not only be the official broadcasters of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, but also of the highly awaited London 2012 Summer Games. Beating out ATV, who had done a pretty complete coverage of the Beijing 2008 Games, but lost their bid this time around.
To make a long relationship short, I thought America Television’s broadcast of the Vancouver 2010 Games was poor because people didn’t care much for winter games down here, so the network didn’t put in the work. Okay, fair enough. I didn’t know then what they would do now. And as those two years passed by, the date of the event neared…
With an Olympic commercial that was more like ass-kissing to the channel and its so called “team”, I started to get worried. It’s not like national soccer commentator Gonzalo Nuñez is the person I would trust with MY multi-million-dollar broadcast of the Olympics since he knows nothing about sports that don’t involve Peruvian men running after a football.
And since when is it okay to kiss your own ass when promoting a sporting event that’s supposed to be about the human sporting spirit and union? This should be about the athletes, this should be about their struggle, this should be about the sports. Not your channel.
Man, I still remember all the rage all over my facebook wall. I was LOL that’s why I watched it all on ESPN (and BBC) XD
@Mirella, I just stand up for the people that have no cable ;)
@amy, @amy, I saw BBC online. My basic cable has no BBC XDDDD Yay for the internet!
I didn’t watch the torch lighting bit because I went out to buy tickets for TDKR 1 hour before the lighting and then had dinner with my dad. But most of it I saw on ESPN. But I had to admit that from a trollface standpoint, I’m not sure how America can top this… unless the President (doesn’t have to be Ollanta) dies and the funeral broadcast gets cut to whatever the fuck Efraín Aguilar has to put on TV around the time.
I saw the America replay at Saturday midnight for the lulz/boredom. Gonzalo Nuñez confused Pet Shop Boys with Depeche Mode. LOL. And then he nicknamed an African athlete as “Balán” Gonzales. I hate him as much as I hate Daniel Peredo… people kiss his ass for his passionate celebration of that Juan Vargas goal against Argentina (1-1), but I thought he made the already shitty Peruvian football team look like if they have just scored a goal after 10 years. LOL.
I can’t remember the Beijing 2008 broadcast from ATV, but most Peruvian people working on tv (and those who don’t) aren’t too up-to-date with general culture. I prefer ATV’s football announcing team (we can’t really call them sports announcing team) because I hate CMD and America’s.
I’m sure ATV won’t troll the audience, but they created Combate, which led to America creating Esto Es Guerra.
@Rodrigo, oh, yeah. I heard the PSB and DM thing on Facebook xD
The ATV team did a decent job at covering Beijing 2008. Eddie Fleischman may not know everything about sports, but he did cover all sports with guests to talk about things like gymnastics, table tennis, badmington, diving, shooting, to all the major ones – and they showed complete competitions throughout the day starting early in the morning (day’s highlights) with regular breaks only for the news. They did all the live coverage during afternoons and night time due to the time difference of 14 hours.
And during the Opening and Closing ceremonies, he did a neutral job since he only needed to read the press release of what was going on xD It’s not like he could have commented about Leehom and Rain showing up hahaha At the most, he must have said “there’s Jackie Chan!” xD
There was little to no need to tune into ESPN to watch the games that year.
America Television is really the worst Peruvian channel that has funds. LOL With that much money, you’d think they would spend it better. If I were an Olympic sponsor in Peru, I would drop their asses to see how they survive. It’s been a horrible PR thing for the channel and for all Olympic-related brands in the country. xD
@amy, As much as I hate America since mid-2000s, the channel kind of came in handy today (to a certain extent) when it came to the live broadcast of Federer vs. Del Potro. ESPN has two channels, but the one showing the tennis match also showed other stuff going on live. So changing between America and ESPN got me viewing most of the 2 half of the match, lol.
Still, Terra Peru’s website does much better coverage of the Olympics than America.
@Rodrigo, yeah, but not everyone has a handy internet access ;P
oh wow. I thought nothing could be worse than, in the USA, how CBS did the 1998 games. I think it was like at least an hour (what felt like 3 hours) of ~inspirational athlete stories~ and then squished all the footage into around 2 hours.
@chrryblssmninja, haha! I don’t think Peru has enough athletes to do a whole segment on their inspirational stories xD I think this is the first time America Television has broadcast the Olympics though, I remember it was usually on Frecuencia Latina (and maybe Panamericana). But then both channels went to the crappers…
At the moment ATV and America are the channels with the most budget and rating.